Not-quite-daily news and musings from the editor of Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Tweet, Tweet: Do You Twitter?...

A few weeks after the SCBWI LA conference last summer, I was emailing with agent Michael Bourret and he mentioned something about being on Twitter. What is this Twitter, I asked? He sent me a link and I joined. (If you don't know what Twitter is, click here. There's even a video.) In a nutshell it's a micro-blogging platform. It's sort of the Facebook status update minus everything else on Facebook.)

For several months, I only followed a handful of people and had a handful of followers. Every so often when I was bored I'd search for new people and companies and newspapers to follow. Then I got an iPhone and now I'm becoming a bit of a Twitter fanatic. I stop myself from checking it all day long. I tweet (that's what you call the posts) at stop lights. I read tweets right before I go to sleep. It's a little like crack.

A few minutes ago I got a notice that F+W Media was now following me (that's my company) which only proves that, officially, everyone is tweeting. And, really, there is a great publishing presence on Twitter. Check out this ever-growing list of publishers, agents, publicists, and bookstores which I'm sure is not comprehensive. Off the top of my head I thought of four agents I follow who are not on this list. (If you want to find lots of publishing folks, also check out who I follow. You need to have an account to do so.)

8 comments:

To twitter or not to twitter...hummm?I relate to your twitter obsession because I do the same with Facebook. I'm glad to read I'm not the only one!Between my blog and Facebook updates I have plenty of technology to obsess about! Great post!

I just followed you, although I find it hard to keep up on Twitter because I don't have an iPhone. Right now, blogging/reading blogs still takes up the bulk of my online time, and then I tend to alternate between Facebook and Twitter.